Speaking at the Civil Service Diversity and Equality Awards last week, Kerslake told CSW he has written to all permanent secretaries setting out his “eight-point plan of action” to improve diversity, and has asked them to set diversity targets for their own departments.
Kerslake (pictured above with the Know Your CJS Day team from the Crown Prosecution Service, winners of the Excellence in Service Delivery award) said he has seen progress against his plan, which he first revealed in June (p1, CSW 12 June), and will discuss targets as part of perm secs mid-year reviews.
He added that the diversity agenda “is critically important because we can’t be a successful civil service if we’re not a diverse civil service.”
This messsage was echoed by cabinet secretary Sir Jeremy Heywood, who told the audience that a civil service made up of “predominantly straight, white British males just isn’t going to work”.
Among the winners named at the ceremony was the civil service Fast Stream team, which picked up the Inclusive Employment award. Gillian Smith, head of Fast Stream, told CSW she is proud of her team for “all the work they have done this year, to keep this agenda alive and to make continuous process on quite a limited budget”.
Other winners included a community-based prostate health drop-in clinic, which won the Understanding and Engaging with Communities category. Tim Elliott, a senior policy advisor at the health department, said the clinic’s success was down to collaboration: “Lots of organisations worked together, such as the NHS, charities and academia, which was the key to this project.”
See more: The full list of winners